“What will happen now?” she asked fearfully.
“Naruto will be fine when he wakes up,” I reassured her. “He can handle that furry asshole easily now, and my younger self over there can fix any medical problems that might come up. But Hinata, promise me you’ll work together with them from now on. Let Naruto know about any other problems you think you’ve found, and trust him to work things out instead of coming up with these crazy schemes on your own.”
She hung her head. “I don’t deserve him after all this,” she choked. “But… it isn’t about me. I promise, Sakura. I’ll listen to Naruto, and do whatever I can to make sure your sacrifice wasn’t in vain.”
“Thank you,” I breathed. I felt so weak. Hollow, like something vital was already missing, and my chakra was so strange. I looked back at my demon aspect in time to see her collapse, completely drained of normal chakra. All that was left to her was a tiny mote of darkness, the trace impurities I hadn’t been able to purge when I severed our Nidhogg connection all those years ago.
She pointed behind me, and I turned to see that the Shinigami was fading from view. Clutched in his hand was a ghostly blue outline of myself, who gazed back at me gravely.
“Take care of them,” she mouthed.
Then she was gone.
I fell to my knees as what little strength I had left fled from my body. But wait, if the Shinigami had taken me how was I still here?
I looked down at myself to find that the last traces of blue human chakra had been sucked from my body as my invocation of the Shinigami ended. All that was left was a faint tracery of gold.
“Oh, dear,” I muttered. “Did I just sacrifice my humanity?”
“I guess so,” my demon aspect said weakly. “Damn, this is going to be awkward. If we merge again our chakra will probably self-destruct. Oh, wait. Never mind. I don’t think I’m going to last long anyway.”
“Spiffy,” I commented. I turned my awareness inward for a moment, surveying the state of my mindscape with a frown. My soul was much weaker than it had been, and I didn’t seem to be producing chakra anymore. Not blue human chakra, obviously, but not gold either. The little bit of energy I had left was all I would ever have.
Wait. Pure gold.
“I think I get it,” I said wearily. “We’re ghosts. Probably the Shinigami doesn’t take celestials, so he left the little bit of celestial power we had behind. But I think I’ve got one last job to do before I fade away.”
I pointed to the Throne of the Gods, still hovering it its original position several hundred feet above our heads.
“Hinata, can you help me get up there?”
30. Victory
Disclaimer: I don’t own Naruto.
Hinata frowned up at the throne floating high above us. “Yes, I can get us there. But is there nothing that can be done for you, Sakura?”
I shook my head. “This is more important, Hinata. I have a few hours to find a way to cheat death, as long as I don’t use any chakra. But if I don’t take this opportunity now everything we’ve gone through will have been in vain.”
“Very well,” Hinata agreed reluctantly. “As much as I have abused your trust recently, it is only fair that I should give you my own. But we shouldn’t split up.”
She focused her own flagging chakra, and to my surprise worked an earth technique. The ground around us shifted with a rumble, and slowly rose to form a column of stone that carried us up to the level of the throne.
I pulled myself to my feet with a groan, and staggered across the seared rock to the ornate device. Not knowing what else to do, I sat.
A display made of nothing but light appeared in front of me, much like the ones I’d seen Astoria use in her office. It showed a login screen, asking for a user name and password that had probably been forgotten centuries ago. But there had to be some way to use this thing or the Bright Kami would never have gone to so much trouble to get me here. I scrutinized what looked like a row of buttons at the bottom of the screen. Ok, Cancel, Change Password, Help… ah, that sounded useful.
I touched the ‘Help’ button with my finger, and another panel appeared with a musical chime. Blinking symbols on the new panel read ‘Please hold, a help desk technician will be with you shortly.’
“You know, Sasuke spent more than a decade trying to find someone who could sit on that throne,” Hinata said speculatively. “He gave up because he thought there wasn’t anyone left with the right bloodline.”
“He was right,” I said. “You have to have been born on our world, and have pure gold chakra. I didn’t qualify until a couple of minutes ago.”
There was another musical chime, and the message was replaced by Astoria’s smiling face.
“Office of the Sysop, Orion Arm Division, how may I help you?” She said pleasantly.
“Astoria?” I said dumbly. “Ok, now I know this whole thing was a setup. Um, my name is Sakura, and we’ve met before, but you don’t remember me because I’m stuck in a time loop. You should have, what did you call it, a memory save?”
“I do?” She said quizzically. She looked away, her fingers flying over a keyboard. “Oh, I see. Yes, just a moment while I do a context load… oh my. I see. But you’re calling from your world’s master system console now? That must be quite a story.”
I chuckled weakly. “Yeah, but I’m not sure if I’ll live long enough to tell it at this point. Look, I need to figure out how to use this thing to get the Blessing of Hope reinstated on my world and get someone who knows what they’re doing in here to take over. Can you tell me how to do that?”
“Hmm. It looks like you qualify for a system account now, and since you’re the only one on your world… sure, no problem. I do this all day. I’m setting up your account now. User name ‘Sakura’, password ‘Sakura’, and I’m locking the account to your console temporarily so it can’t be hacked while we’re working. Just be sure to change the password to something secure before I hang up. Ok, it should be ready now. Give it a try.”
“Um, how do I type anything?” I asked.
“Oh! Touch the input field, and you should get an entry tablet,” she explained.
I touched the little box labeled ‘User Name’ with my finger, and what looked like a glowing keyboard of light appeared in the air. I shrugged, and obediently typed my name twice. When I hit enter the panel blinked once and faded, to be replaced by a new panel covered with tiny pictures.
Before I could ask what they meant a message appeared over the icons. It read ‘No other valid users detected in this system partition. Emergency administrative privileges granted. Treasury draft privileges granted. Planetary supervisor position is vacant. Claim planetary command? Y/N’.
I reached for the button labeled “Yes”, but hesitated. The last time I’d talked to Astoria she’d been awfully anxious to recruit me, and I still didn’t know what their game was. Considering how hung up on free will the Bright Kami were, consenting to anything I didn’t understand was probably a bad idea.
I touched “No”, and the message vanished.
Astoria frowned slightly. “Are you sure you don’t want to take on the planetary supervisor post, at least temporarily? The fringe benefits are kind of important.”
I thought about it for a moment. “Let me guess. An Yggdrasil feed?”
She nodded hesitantly.
I sighed. How typical of them, to set me up to die and then tempt me with salvation on their terms.
“Astoria, why exactly did I have to go through all this? Why couldn’t you guys just turn the blessing back on yourselves?”
“We couldn’t do that, Sakura,” she insisted. “That would be against the rules.”